Carolyn Downs is to step down from her £140,000 a year post as chief executive of Shropshire CC at the end of the year to join the Ministry of Justice.
Mrs Downs is also among several chief executives who have announced plans to move after the completion of unitary reviews, including Northumberland CC chief executive Mark Henderson and Durham CC’s Mark Lloyd, who left to become chief executive at Cambridgeshire.
She will become deputy permanent
secretary and director general for corporate performance at the Ministry of Justice and is the latest in a long line of leading chief
executives who have moved on to take up senior Government posts.
Mrs Downs, 48, was the first-ever female chief executive of the county council when she was appointed in April 2003 and has been at the forefront of the moves to establish a single unitary council in Shropshire.
She joined Shropshire in 1999 as director of community and environmental services after moving from Calderdale MBC, where she had been director of leisure services.
Among the roll call of chief executives
taking senior Government posts are: – Islington’s former chief executive Helen Bailey, who left in January and then later took up a post as director of public services
at The Treasury, and Birmingham’s Lin Home, who moved to become chief
executive of the UK Border Agency.
Sheffield chief executive Sir Bob Kerslake will become the first chief executive of the new Homes and Communities Agency when it begins operating on 1 April
next year.
Nottinghamshire chief executive Peter Housden joined the Department for
Education and Skills as director general for schools before becoming permanent secretary at the Department of Communities and Local Government.
Former Bedfordshire chief executive David Bell is now permanent secretary at
the Department for Children, Schools and Families.
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